"For the time being the sound of music has been drowned out by construction.

But when work is done, the Royal Conservatory of Music's TELUS Centre will be a different place, a seamless blend of new and old, intimate yet public, a performance venue as well as a state-of-the-art educational facility.

Designed by Marianne McKenna of Toronto's acclaimed architectural firm Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, it represents a huge step forward for the RCM, not to mention the city. The $110 million complex, which sits just west of the Royal Ontario Museum - like the National Ballet School and the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art - that takes as its starting point the idea of urbanism itself..."